New peer mentor program gives ‘go-to’ community for student-veterans transitioning from navy to school

November 8, 2022

For navy veterans like Jacob Bolar, Columbus State College’s Veteran Peer Mentor
Program has been key in making the “intimidating” transition from serving within the navy
to finding out within the faculty classroom.

Created in Spring 2022, this system got down to join student-veterans with one in every of
CSU’s present veteran peer mentors. Bolar, a U.S. Air Pressure veteran and laptop science
main scheduled to in December 2022, has served as a veteran peer mentor and understands
what veterans undergo throughout this transitionary part of their lives.

“Veterans often have a really robust time transitioning from the navy to the civilian-student
world as a result of it may be intimidating,” he mentioned. “They go from a lifetime of being instructed
what to do each minute of the day, having to stick to strict requirements, and being
prepared for something 24/7, to being utterly on their very own and with no structured steerage.”

Bolar graduated from Harris County Excessive College in 2014 and enrolled at CSU that fall.
After a yr of courses, he determined to enlist within the Air Pressure. He finally ended
up in Oklahoma, the place he underwent Superior Particular person Coaching and served as a 35
November. After almost three years at Fort Meade in Maryland working within the Nationwide
Safety Company, he determined to return to Columbus and picked up his research at CSU
in January 2020.

Now, two years after resuming his research, and in his new position as a veteran peer mentor,
Bolar emphasised the advantages of a program that gives student-veterans with a community
on which to lean. Alongside along with his 40 different peer mentors, Bolar is a “go-to” individual
for the veterans if they’ve any questions, issues, or feedback associated to class,
campus life, or something outdoors of teachers.

“The steerage I present to my fellow student-veterans extends from discovering out the place
a category is to how to join counseling or tutoring companies—and all the things in
between,” Bolar mentioned.

The peer mentor group has a particular relationship with the CSU Counseling Middle, whereby an active-duty service member who makes a speciality of counseling veterans is particularly
obtainable to help former troopers with PTSD. Any student-veteran can join
an appointment.

Bolar stays in fixed contact with the student-veteran mentees in his community, sending
them emails every week on assets they will make the most of on or off campus that would profit
a necessity they could have. He additionally gives numerous in-person and telephone name check-ins
to ensure they’re doing effectively with managing their courses. A few of his latest steerage
has included find out how to apply or increase incapacity with the Disabled American Veterans
(DAV) in Columbus, or find out how to apply for tutoring classes on the Simon Schwob Memorial Library earlier than midterms and finals.

Susan Lovell, director of CSU’s Workplace of Navy Enrollment and Grownup Learners, believes that peer
mentors considerably influence first-time student-veterans general success.

“We hope that our first-time college students all have an ideal expertise of their first semester
and that they wish to proceed their enrollment,” defined Lovell. “At present about
66% of our first-time student-veterans will enroll for a second time period, and we actually
wish to see that quantity enhance.”

She additionally indicated that applications like this present the construction student-veterans
say they noticeably lack after their switch to school life in comparison with their earlier
navy surroundings. That, together with elevated student-veteran retention charges,
underscores the general satisfaction student-veterans and their dependents expertise
at CSU and contributes to the college’s numerous military-friendly campus scores by a number of exterior rating organizations.

The academic wants of navy personnel, veterans, and grownup learners might be fairly
totally different than these of conventional college students. CSU gives a collection of assets designed
completely for grownup college students and navy personnel. For extra details about the assets CSU gives, go to https://www.columbusstate.edu/military-and-adult-learners/.